Hunted tgl-3 (16 page)

“Did Bran tell you what they discussed this morning?” Remy asked. “It seemed intense, but they were both grinning like they’d found the Holy Grail.”

I shook my head. “I haven’t seen Bran since our morning training session.”

“You trained this morning?” Izzy asked.

“Around five o’clock,” I said.

Kim reached out and rubbed my arm. “The nightmares again?”

Surprised by the gesture, I nodded. “I agree with Remy. Master Haziel knows something. Remember how he pointed out a passage on the book on Mediums before we knew Kylie was a medium? He gave me a book…” My cell phone dinged. I fished it out of my pocket and read the text.

Is Bran with you?

I typed.
No. Why?

When I pressed the send button and looked up, the others were staring at me with annoyance. Making a face, I put the phone back in my pocket. “Sorry. It’s Kylie. Uh, where was I? Yeah, Master Haziel gave me a book on the Goddess and he keeps pushing me to read it.” I shrugged. “So are we going to continue hiding and waiting?”

“We should sneak out and do our own investigation, beat the senior Cardinals to the punch like we’d planned before,” Sykes said. “Like we did with Coronis
and
on Jarvis Island.”

Silence followed his announcement, then everyone started talking at once.

“I don’t know, guys,” Izzy said.

“Live a little, Izzy,” Sykes said with a gleam in his eyes. “We can round up demons and torture them until they talk.”

“Or ask Darius and the Brotherhood to help us,” Remy added. “The problem is how to contact them without the senior Cardinals knowing about it.”

“Don’t worry, Keiran and his friends
will
help,” Kim said confidently.

“How do you know that?” Sykes asked then he smirked. “Ah, I forgot you two are joined at the hip now.”

“We’re not,” Kim protested.

Everyone laughed while she blushed. My cell phone dinged again. I reached inside my pocket and muted the phone.

“Dante and Kael might help too,” I said, “if they don’t hate me for hurting him.”

“The big guys can handle pain,” Remy said dismissively. “They’re nature-benders. Who wants something to drink?” He got to his feet.

Everyone nodded. While he went and got sodas, my phone dinged again.

“Give me that,” Kim snapped and stuck her hand toward me.

I cocked my brow. “What?”

“Your stupid phone keeps making that annoying ding,” she explained. “I know you and Kylie are tight, but she can’t monopolize your time. She’s always calling with some cockamamie excuse about needing your help or…”

I tuned her out, pulled the cell phone out of my pocket and checked the last text. Kylie was desperate. Her ‘get here now’ had exclamation marks. I powered it off. “Are we done? Because I’ve got to go.”

“Did you hear anything I just said?” Kim asked.

I grinned. “No. See you guys tomorrow morning.”

Izzy gripped my arm. “Wait a sec. Do you know that Kylie’s family moved?”

Another lost memory. “When? To where?”

“Beginning of summer. They live in Nibley now. I’ll show you. We’ve had to drag your behind from her house a few times in the past few weeks.”

A
big dresser stood in the middle of Kylie’s bedroom and I would have bumped into it if I hadn’t slowed down my teleport. Izzy wasn’t so lucky.

“Dang it, Kylie. What’s this doing in the middle of your room?”

Kylie looked up and grimaced. She had been watching something on her laptop while lying on her bed. She sat up, a frown on her face. “Sorry about that.”

“Never mind. Gotta go.” Izzy glanced around and whistled softly. “Nice décor. You two have fun.”

Kylie wore a confused expression. “What was that about? I mean, what was she doing here?”

“Long story. But seriously, what’s this,” I pointed at the dresser, “doing in the middle of your room?”

Kylie wrinkled her nose. “Dad had it repainted and brought it in an hour ago. I tried to move it, but it weighs more than I do. What time is it?”

“Nine-thirty-ish,” I guessed without looking at my watch, my gaze on the Celtic symbols all over the dresser. With the black background, the squiggly drawings popped. Her new bedroom was spacious and beautifully decorated. “This is beautiful.”

“I know.” Kylie stood and stretched, her tank top hiking up to reveal a tattoo on her hip. “It’s perfect. Matches my curtains, don’t you think?”

“And
your tattoo.” Kylie was a petite five-foot-four with a pixie face, grey eyes and brown hair—her natural hair color. Before, she’d dyed it black during her Gothic phase.

“So what took you?” she asked. “I texted you, like, an hour ago.”

I laughed. “What took me? Who do you think I am? Your servant?”

“Clark Kent to my Chloe Sullivan, faithful sidekick and best friend ever.” She grinned when I scrunched up my face. Still grinning, she walked to where I stood beside the dresser, hands going to her hips. “You’re not just the Chosen One, you are Lil
Fáthaig
. That means—”

“Lil the Mighty, I know.”

She made a face. “I hate that you can speak, like, a gazillion languages.”

“Okay. From now on I’ll pretend I don’t know Gaelic.”

“Don’t bother, smarty-pants. Anyway, when I need heavy lifting, you’re the one I text. When you need R&R from Guardian biz and computer research, I’m your girl.”

I made a derisive sound. “You can’t be Chloe. You suck with computers.”

“Nitpicking, and not my fault. My parents gave all the smart genes to my brainiac brother.” She pouted. “It’s so unfair. You can find me any time and any where, while I have to send a stupid text.”

“Texts,” I corrected her. “As in five of them. What is the emergency anyway?”

Kylie frowned. “What are you talking about? I sent you
one
text message because of this,” she waved at the dresser, “not four.”

“Four
more
after the first one. My cell phone kept vibrating while I was in the middle of a conference.”

She searched for her phone “That doesn’t make sense.”

“What?”

“I texted you once.”

She was getting pissed. “Forget it. It’s not important.”

“Is too.” She marched toward the door, her frown fierce. “I’m going to kill the slimy worm.”

Before I could ask her what she meant, Kylie had yanked open her door and stomped to the one down the hall. It had a quantum physics poster and a picture of Albert Einstein. She banged on it with her fist. “Jesse!”

No response.

“Open up or I’ll break it down!”

The door jerked open to reveal her brother, pimpled face red, a mop of curly brown hair falling over his forehead. He wore a T-shirt with the writing
Schrödinger’s Cat, Dead and Alive
, and a drawing of cat in a cage. Two of his friends appeared behind him and stared at Kylie with wary expressions, video game controllers clenched in their hands.

“Break it down?” Jesse asked. “Physically impossible since you are only five-three and weigh about one—”

“Shut up, you freak,” Kylie snapped. “You took my cell phone again! Where is it?”

“I don’t have it,” her brother protested. Then he saw me and smiled. “Hi, Lil.”

I gave him a tiny wave.

“Don’t talk to her. Just because she’s played a few video games with you doesn’t make her
your
friend. You can’t pretend to be me and text her.”

His brother shook his head. “I didn’t touch your stupid phone, Kylie. We’ve been in here playing video games all evening.”

“Liar! My phone is missing and you’ve been bugging me for days to ask her to come over.” She thrust her face forward and hissed, “She’s got a boyfriend, you loser.”

Jesse glanced my way one more time, face redder than before, then whispered through clenched teeth, “Ask Mom. She’ll tell you we haven’t left my room for hours. Maybe your witches,” he wiggled his fingers, “took it.”

“Goddesses,” Kylie snapped. “Celtic deities.”

“Get a life.” He slammed his door.

“I have a life,” she shouted through the door. “And it’s not in some online gaming world.”

Feeling bad for Jesse, who’d had a crush on me since the first time Kylie had invited me to their home, I retreated into her room. He was a year younger than her, tall, gangly, and going through the zits stage. The few times we’d played video games, I had had fun, though.

“I swear my parents found him in a crashed spaceship,” Kylie snapped when she re-entered her bedroom. “He’s so weird.”

“I’m sure he just wanted my help with a game. Where do you say you wanted the dresser?” I asked, hoping to distract her, but I shouldn’t have bothered. She continued to search for her phone while muttering under her breath.

“I’m telling on him, the worm.”

“It’s no big deal, you know,” I said, trying to calm her down.

“Is too. He’s always stealing my phone to text his friends. It’s not my fault he lost his.”

I stopped trying to help and studied her room instead. It was done in black and white, from the bed cover to the draperies; the only colors were the wooden floor and colored pillows on her bed. Celtic spirals and knots dominated everything. It was beautiful and so Kylie.

“Okay?” she asked.

I raised my brow, feeling a little guilty for ignoring her rant. “What?”

“I said, let’s move the bed first from this wall to that,” she pointed to the wall adjacent to the window. “Then the dresser to where the bed is. This way, the mirror can reflect the window and give an illusion of more space.”

“Move out of the way,” I warned. I waited until Kylie stood by the door, then moved her bed to the adjacent wall. The books shifted a little but didn’t fall. Next, I put the dresser where the bed had been while Kylie issued orders like a drill sergeant.

“A little to the right…not too much…an inch or two to the left,” she said. “Perfect. Thank you. Look, I found my phone.” It was inside the top drawer of her new dresser. “And it’s dead. I swear if catch him with it again, his DS is mine.” She placed the phone on the dresser, jumped on to her bed, scooted over and patted the area beside her. I moved the pillows behind me then flopped on my back and stared at the ceiling.

“Start talking,” she said.

I frowned. “About what?”

“What the Guardians have been up to…what I’ve missed. Duh. I haven’t seen you in over a week. You promised to keep me in the loop and I look forward to hearing about your escapades.”

“Escapades? We’ve been canceling contracts. Hardly exciting.”

“Not from the way you often tell it, and there was also the meeting with that lightning demon that blocked the light from the Kris Dagger. So start talking and don’t leave anything out,” she warned.

Obviously, I’d shared everything with her. “I’ll start with why Izzy came with me to your place. I was attacked on Saturday and lost months of memories, including those about your new home.”

Kylie sat up, her eyes round. I started with the attack and the more I talked, the more frantic she became—surprise giving way to worry then panic.

“Powerful demons are after you and you waited for nearly a week before telling me?” she screeched.

“Four days,” I corrected her.

“Whatever. And your powers…do you have a headache right now?”

I shrugged. “Just a dull throb. Sleeping this afternoon helped. But, I’ve learned to live with them.”

“Have you taken something for it?”

I cocked my brow. “Something?”

“Headache meds. It doesn’t have to be prescription strength. Just over-the-counter ones.”

I shook my head. “What?”

She rolled her eyes. “You are part human, so maybe, just maybe Ibuprofen or Aleve might take care of your human side of the headache.” She hopped off the bed and disappeared in the hallway. I was still staring after her in disbelief when she returned with a bottle and water in a glass.

“You think over-the-counter meds will cure me?”

“What do you have to lose?” She read the label, opened the bottle, and removed two pills. She pushed them in my hand, then offered me water. “Take them.”

I stared at the oval-shaped gel. “They look like miniature hellgels.”

“These have chemicals that stop headaches and whatnots. Swallow them whole too, no biting or chewing.”

I chuckled, then placed the gels on my tongue and washed them down with water. “Now what?”

“Now let human technology work its wonders. It will be absorbed into your body. Could I, you know, see them?” She indicated my back.

“Why? They look like tattoos. No big deal.”

“Thanks for spoiling the surprise for me. Now turn around.”

For such a tiny girl she could be so bossy sometimes. “I swear to Goddess, if you say anything mean…” I stood, turned and lifted my shirt.

For a moment, Kylie didn’t speak. Then she said, “Uh, Lil, there’s nothing on your skin.”

I frowned. “What do you mean? They cover my spine, from the base of my neck to my lower back.”

“Not anymore. See for yourself.”

My heart pounding, I pulled off my top and studied my back through the mirror. Kylie was right—there was nothing on my back. Not sure what it meant, I pulled my shirt back on. “That’s weird.”

“Weird good or weird bad?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

She sat back on her bed and continued to study me like I was some alien she was trying to figure out. For a brief moment, I was tempted to read her thoughts, but I resisted. I had a rule about not getting inside my friends’ minds.

“Tell me what we did this summer,” I said instead.

She chuckled. “Funny, I’m usually the one with the questions. Okay, don’t give me that look. I’ll answer you, but first, do you really think Gavyn is behind this?”

“It doesn’t matter what I think.” I scowled at the ceiling, remembering the look on Bran’s face when he’d told us about a possible connection between his brother and the Summoners. “What matters is Bran and what this would mean to him if it’s true. Sometimes, I wish I had the power to spare him pain.”

“Having Gavyn for a brother totally sucks. Makes me appreciate mine.”

It didn’t seem like that a few minutes ago. “Makes me happy I’m an only child,” I said.

“Uh, you’re not an only child.”

“Thanks for reminding me.” Solange’s perfect face, gorgeous hair, and body like a swimsuit model flashed in my head. She was only my half-sister and about as evil as Gavyn. “Every time I think Gavyn has changed, wham, he does something stupid. If he deliberately summoned these powerful demons to stop Bran from canceling his contracts, we’ll have to deal with him.”

“Send him to Tartarus?” Kylie asked.

Bran would have to let go of his brother before we could do that. “I haven’t thought that far yet, but yes.”

“What if it’s not Gavyn? Don’t look at me like that,” she added when I scowled. “What if it’s…Solange?” She raised her hands in mock surrender. “There’s that look again. You told me Solange vowed to come after you.”

I scowled, trying to remember. “I did?”

“Yes, the night of your party. You know, after Jarvis Island and the mortal combat. You came back and threw a killer party. The students talked about it the rest of the semester. You’re officially, the party—”

“Yeah, that’s nice,” I said impatiently. “Tell me about Solange.”

“You told me you called the number Valafar had given, but she was the one who answered it. She vowed to make you sorry.”

I sat up and scrunched my face. “Why would I call Valafar?”

“You wanted proof that he was dead or something like that.”

“Tell me everything I told you. Bran tried to fill me in on what we did, but that only covered what
he
and
I
did.”

“I helped with his birthday party, so if he said the cake you baked was scrumptious? He lied. It was terrible.”

I threw her a disgusted look. “He told me the same thing. Now back to filling in the blanks.”

She talked about everything I’d told her about Valafar and my doubts about whether he was really in Tartarus or hiding somewhere until he healed, then she moved to the party, our mutual friends, and the things we’d done together since school closed. McKenzie, my other human friend, was visiting relatives in England. Basically, when I wasn’t out with the Guardians or with Bran, I spent time with Kylie watching reruns of her favorite TV programs online or went shopping at the mall, except for the weeks she and her mother visited her aunt in L.A. and went to the Celtic Arts Center. A door slammed shut somewhere in the house, followed by laughter. I looked up and frowned. “Your parents are home.”

Kylie shrugged. “So? They love you. Mom thinks I’m discovering my Celtic roots because of you and your Gypsy background. According to her, you are the perfect friend.”

Perfect? If only she knew. “So you’re never going to tell her about your special ability?”

“No way.” She shook her head. “Not until I have to. Despite her excitement over all this,” she waved to indicate the Celtic symbols in her room, “she’d freak out.”

There was a light knock at the door. “Sweetheart, are you asleep?”

“Still up, Mom,” Kylie yelled.

Her mother said something, then her dad’s deeper voice answered. “Can we come in?”

Kylie looked at me and cocked an eyebrow in question. I shrugged.

“Sure,” Kylie responded